Supremes to decide if public domain works can be re-copyrighted

The Supreme Court says it will hear a case considering whether public domain works can be pushed back into the copyright closet. And advocacy groups say that free speech is at stake in this fight.

Congress' decision to uphold an international treaty allowing for public works to be "restored" into copyright will create an atmosphere of uncertainty for libraries, they warn, caretakers of the public domain. "Because it protects our cultural commons, the public domain is equally essential, in turn, to free speech, helping to give meaning to the First Amendment right to receive information," wrote the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Internet Archive in a brief asking the Supremes to hear the matter. "Given the large number of works in the collections of US libraries, libraries must reasonably fear that they could be sued multiple times if they continued to provide access to the materials in their collections that might be withdrawn from the public domain."